Sunlight and Happy Endings
by Asael
Summary: Though this isn't the life she dreamed of, Kyoko is happy.


**Sunlight and Happy Endings**

**by Asael  
**

When I was a little girl, I never dreamed that my life would end up this way. I imagined my future the same way that any little girl did - fantasies of princesses, handsome princes, fairy tale castles. As I grew older, my imaginary future chanced to something more prosaic. Like my mother, I dreamed of marrying a kind man, raising our children, living in a beautiful little house. A different kind of fairy tale.

I did marry a kind man. No one could call Tsuna anything but that, Mafia boss or not.

But ever since middle school, ever since I visited that sad, painful future and Tsuna told me the truth about what he and my brother and everyone else were really doing, my chances of having a normal life slowly disappeared.

Please don't misunderstand me. I chose that. I could have decided never to ask, or I could have decided to stay out of it once I knew, act like I didn't know and continue on. It's not impossible - even though Hana married my brother, even though she's aware of what he does, she stays away from that life, living as a normal woman whose husband is simply away often.

But she can do that. She married a Guardian, and Ryohei doesn't want her to be involved either.

I married the Tenth Head of the Vongola family. I don't have the option of staying out of it. But that too was my choice - Tsuna would have understood if I didn't want to be the boss' wife.

I chose this life for myself. I knew what I was getting into from the moment Tsuna hesitantly asked me out for the very first time, though it took awhile before I really understood.

I think that happened on the day Tsuna looked at me across a table in a small cafe and told me, softly but seriously, that he thought it would be good if I kept I-pin or someone else near me as much as possible. A bodyguard, and even if he didn't use that word, I knew. Just in case, he said, he was sure it wouldn't be necessary, but I could see in his eyes that he wasn't sure of that at all.

Now I have bodyguards whenever I leave the house, even to shop. And I carry a gun in my purse.

That was my decision, too. I don't like guns and I never will, but I don't want to be helpless. I was the one who asked Reborn for the lessons, and Tsuna didn't even know until it was too late to stop us. Reborn said I was a natural shot, but that I'd never have the soul of a killer. That made me happier than anything else he could have said.

I'm sure that, like plenty of others, you thought I was soft and sweet. The traditional Japanese wife of a Japanese Mafia boss. And it's all right if you think that - I really don't mind. I'm not like Bianchi, who was born to this life, or Haru, who was frightened at first but has since discovered a truly impressive talent at wiretapping and covert operations. I admire both of them, but I'll never be a fighter and I don't want to be.

But as I have said so many times, I chose this life, and I choose to live it as well as I can. Tsuna's Guardians listen to me when I ask something of them, even though I usually stay out of my husband's business - I still know what's going on, and they know if I ask then it must be important.

And this gun in my purse? I did use it once. My life can be dangerous, if not as much as Tsuna's, and my bodyguards aren't infallible. I was with my son (beautiful, a treasure, one of the reasons I'll never be sorry for this), on an afternoon outing in the park. Someone slipped through the guards, I don't know how. It wasn't me he was after, but my son, the next Vongola heir, and I acted without a thought.

I regret ending his life. I regret having killed a human being, a man who may have had a family, friends, children of his own. But I would do the same thing again, even a million times, for my son.

This is the life I chose: a gun in my purse, kept loaded. Bodyguards carefully chosen, always with me. Seven of the most dangerous men in the world on speed-dial. Dinner parties for rival bosses, where I watch them carefully because sometimes I can see the danger even before my husband, and sometimes I can deflect it with just the right words. Visiting friends in the hospital, not because they are sick but because no matter how lucky you are, every once in awhile a bullet has to hit.

Raising my son to have the strength of both his father and myself, to follow in his footsteps and lead the Vongola with mercy and resolve.

When I got older, I learned that the fairy tales I'd been told as a child were the lighter versions of older tales, dark with blood and poetic justice. I'm an adult now, and this is the fairy tale I've chosen. As bloody as it can be sometimes, it's also full of love and friendship, devotion and bonds stronger than steel.

And I'm happy.


End file.
